Jade Snow Wong

Jade Snow Wong was an ceramic artist and author of two autobiographical volumes.

Biography

Wong was born in San Francisco and brought up in a family that maintained traditional Chinese customs. Due to the high importance her family placed on education and her own desire to learn, Wong graduated from Mills College in 1942. She worked as a secretary during World War II, and discovered a talent for ceramics. When she began to sell her work in a shop in Chinatown, it quickly found popularity.

Literary and artistic work

In 1950, Wong published the first of her two autobiographical volumes, ''Fifth Chinese Daughter.'' The book was translated into several Asian languages by the , which sent her on a four-month speaking tour of Asia in 1953. "I was sent," Wong wrote, "because those Asian audiences who had read translations of ''Fifth Chinese Daughter'' did not believe a female born to poor Chinese immigrants could gain a toehold among prejudiced Americans." Her second volume, ''No Chinese Stranger,'' was published in 1975.

Wong's pottery was later displayed in art museums across the United States, including a 2002 exhibition at the Chinese Historical Society of America. Towards the end of her life, Wong ran a travel service in San Francisco, and died there in 2006.

Critical studies

#The Oriental/Occidental Dynamic in Chinese American Life Writing: Pardee Lowe and Jade Snow Wong By: Madsen, Deborah L.; ''Amerikastudien/American Studies'', 2006; 51 : 343-53.
#Chinese American Writers of the Real and the Fake: Authenticity and the Twin Traditions of Life Writing By: Madsen, Deborah L.; ''Canadian Review of American Studies/Revue Canadienne d'Etudes Americaines'', 2006; 36 : 257-71.
#Reading Ethnography: The Cold War Social Science of Jade Snow Wong's ''Fifth Chinese Daughter'' and Brown v. Board of Education By: Douglas, Christopher. pp. 101-24 IN: Zhou, Xiaojing ; Najmi, Samina ; ''Form and Transformation in Asian American Literature''. Seattle, WA: U of Washington P; 2005. 296 pp.
#Labored Realisms: Geopolitical Rhetoric and Asian American and Asian Migrant Women's biography By: Hesford, Wendy S.; ''JAC'', 2003; 23 : 77-107.
#Chinese Medicine and Asian-American Literature: A Case Study of ''Fifth Chinese Daughter'' By: Zheng, Da; ''JASAT '', 2002 Oct; 33: 11-30.
#'Nothing Solid': Racial Identity and Identification in ''Fifth Chinese Daughter'' and ''Wilshire Bus'' By: Motooka, Wendy. pp. 207-32 IN: Goldner, Ellen J. ; Henderson-Holmes, Safiya ; ''Racing and Racing Language: Living with the Color of Our Words''. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse UP; 2001. xvi, 300 pp.
#Jade Snow Wong By: Kapai, Leela. pp. 387-90 IN: Nelson, Emmanuel S. ; ''Asian American Novelists: A Bio-Bibliographical Critical Sourcebook''. Westport, CT: Greenwood; 2000. xi, 422 pp.
#''Representing the 'Other': Images of China and the Chinese in the Works of Jade Snow Wong, Maxine Hong Kingston and Amy Tan'' By: Liu, Hong; Dissertation Abstracts International, Section A: The Humanities and Social Sciences, 1999 May; 59 : 4144. U of Toledo, 1998.
#''"Just Translating": The Politics of Translation and Ethnography in Chinese-American Women's Writing'' By: Su, Karen Kai-yuan; Dissertation Abstracts International, Section A: The Humanities and Social Sciences, 1999 Feb; 59 : 2989. U of California, Berkeley, 1998.
#The Meaning of Ethnic Literature to the Historian By: Daniels, Roger. pp. 31-38 IN: Grabher, Gudrun M. ; Bahn-Coblans, Sonja ; ''The Self at Risk in English Literatures and Other Landscapes/Das Risiko Selbst in der englischsprachigen Literatur und in anderen Bereichen''. Innsbruck, Austria: Institut für Sprachwissenschaft, Universit?t Innsbruck; 1999. xvi, 381 pp.
#''Lands of Her Own: The Chinese-American Woman in Two Pioneering Texts'' By: Wong, Patricia May-Lynn; Dissertation Abstracts International, Section A: The Humanities and Social Sciences, 1997 June; 57 : 5156. State U of New York, Binghamton, 1996.
#''Estranging the Natural Elements of Narrative'' By: Shitabata, Russell Hiromu; Dissertation Abstracts International, Section A: The Humanities and Social Sciences, 1997 Mar; 57 : 3952. U of Oregon, 1996.
#Jade Snow Wong's Badge of Distinction in the 1990s By: Su, Karen; ''Hitting Critical Mass: A Journal of Asian American Cultural Criticism'', 1994 Winter; 2 : 3-52.
#The Illusion of the Middle Way: Liberal Feminism and Biculturalism in Jade Snow Wong's ''Fifth Chinese Daughter'' By: Bow, Leslie. pp. 161-75 IN: Revilla, Linda A. ; Nomura, Gail M. ; Wong, Shawn ; Hune, Shirley ; ''Bearing Dream, Shaping Visions: Asian Pacific American Perspectives''. Pullman, WA: Washington State UP; 1993. xv, 282 pp.
#The Tradition of Chinese American Women's Life Stories: Thematics of Race and Gender in Jade Snow Wong's ''Fifth Chinese Daughter'' and Maxine Hong Kingston's ''The Woman Warrior'' By: Lim, Shirley Geok-lin. pp. 252-67 IN: Culley, Margo ; ''American Women's Autobiography: Feats of Memory''. Madison: U of Wisconsin P; 1992. xiii, 329 pp.
#Food as an Expression of Cultural Identity in Jade Snow Wong and ''Songs for Jadina'' By: Cobb, Nora; ''Hawaii Review'', 1988 Spring; 12 : 12-16.
#''The Female Identity in Cross-Cultural Perspective: Immigrant Women's Autobiography'' By: Demirturk, Emine Lale; Dissertation Abstracts International, 1987 Jan.; 47 : 2584A.
#Chinesisch-amerikanische Literatur: Eine Fallstudie anhand zweier Autobiographien By: Meissenburg, Karin. pp. 356-379 IN: Ostendorf, Berndt ; ''Amerikanische Gettoliteratur: Zur Literatur ethnischer, marginaler und unterdrückter Gruppen in Amerika''. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchges.; 1984. 403 pp.
#The Divided Voice of Chinese-American Narration: Jade Snow Wong's ''Fifth Chinese Daughter'' By: Yin, Kathleen Loh Swee; ''MELUS'', 1982 Spring; 9 : 53-59.
#The Icicle in the Desert: Perspective and Form in the Works of Two Chinese-American Women Writers By: Blinde, Patricia Lin; ''MELUS'', 1979 Fall; 6 : 51-71.